As a painter, ZHANG Jian is pure; as a man, he is honest and pure, just like his paintings. ZHANG Jian thinks painting as his personal interest and he neither thinks there is any social meaning of his paintings, nor cares about social issues. His attention is mainly focused on two aspects: one is how to paint, how to achieve consistence between his image effect and his own concepts; another is his personal inner world, why he chooses that kind of themes and why paint like that. He thinks what he paints out is not only the effect of images, but also his personal feelings, especially something elusory deep in his heart. He feels that nice things are always fleeting and the beauty brought by the sunshine as well. Therefore, he captures that kind of instant beauty with his sharp eyes and records the process of the beauty as the process of inner desire constantly extroverted. That kind of desire actually contains some sadness, for in these paintings, there is also yearning and detainment for the beauty contained. We are touched by his paintings. The bright sunshine, green shadow and blue sky seem to be in a dream scene of memories, something being kept away from our world.

　　ZHANG Jian's paintings are like sounds of the nature. How can he understand more than others from a common living scene? ZHANG Jian is a gifted painter with very sharp feelings to colors and the ability to capture every moment of life. That personalized brushworks seem to be the narration of feelings and his bold and fresh use of colors is also hard to achieve by others. Just for the manual ability, many painters also have the same level as he has, but with different focuses. They paint landscapes, still lives,  and daily living scenes, but their paintings can hardly inspire that kind of soul interaction as ZHANG Jian's paintings. Viewing ZHANG Jian's paintings, you will feel a person alive standing before you, saying something quite normal but in a kind of blue lyric language. Then you will be touched by these common things. ZHANG Jian paints living scenes of the mid 90s, for this period of time is meaningful to him.

　　ZHANG Jian graduated from Mural Department of China Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 1993 and then began his creation. He only spent two years studying in oil painting of Mural Department in CAFA and the influence of the training in the academy on him was limited. Therefore, he can think out of the box in painting and choose favorite themes based on his personal interests, as well as way of painting. Moreover, he was offered a chance when he began his creation in a new times when the new art trend represented by artists of the "new generation" began to emerge. It was a period of time when the new and the old alternated in art movements and trend of thoughts. In a larger background, it was a transition period of the whole society. There was anxiety and tension in the trend of commercialization showing close connection with the realization of personal value. Personal life style and living state became the themes focused in art, which was obviously presented among the new-generation painters. They painted out their attitudes towards life in some daily life themes and hided their yearning for new life in those hazy and helpless images. These youths showed a kind of feeling not knowing what to do when facing with such an increasingly diversified society. They had no fame and social status and were trapped in the economic embarrassment, which shared a huge contrast with the society of increasingly abundant materials. This feeling of contrast was directly presented in the new-generation pianters. Actually it was also a kind of common social psychology.

　　Compared with painters of the new generation, ZHANG Jian obviously had no so clear consciousness, but the presentation of daily life naturally attributed him into this trend of thoughts. We can only say that ZHANG Jian borrowed something from the new generation painters and shared many common points with them in realistic themes and youth feelings. But there was still distinct difference between them. If say the new generation painters had a tendence of realism, then ZHANG Jian's paintings tended to be of romanticism. Painters of the new generation painted out a true reality while ZHANG Jian painted an ideal world in realistic presentation. He did not purposely describe a fragment of life, but expressed his living consciousness in the process of "art for art's sake". He thought he was life painting for the sake of painting. He wanted to paint out feelings of sunshine and grassland, and human's status in the glow. He found himself a quiet grove in the noisy city, found a model, put some fruits on the white cloth as props, when the sunshine fell on the grassland and the man through leaves, he began to paint out that kind of impressionistic and glow effect. Life painting in the glow offered people a feeling different from that in a place of the city, but spring outing or picnic in the suburb. It was his new version of Lunch on the Grassland.

　　ZHANG Jian's sunshine was symbolic and represented something nice but short-lived. In such a society filled with desire, temptation and competition, the yearning for this nicety was the land deep in the heart of everyone living in the contemporary society. ZHANG Jian just evoked this kind of common yearning through his forms, that is, yearning for rebuilding the lost home. In his paintings, there was no piffle and helplessness, which was just his difference from painters of the new generation. He seemed to view with a na?ve sight the life which was pure without any urban pollution just like his colors. He used some impressionistic concepts and techniques, but his colors were stronger and purer than that of the impressionism, finding a relationship of harmony among nearly inharmonizable colors. He used large areas of unmixed green in his paintings, with similarly pure blue and light yelloe inserted, showing a kind of multicolored pattern feeling, nice and beautiful. Seen from that, ZHANG Jian's life painting was only one of his mediums to truly represent his life view and potential desire. When he reflected his trueness all out, his talent in painting, unique feelings towards color relationship and transnormal mastering of pure color, as well as randomicity and ease in brushworks were revealed together with his sincere desire of life.

　　After experiencing the stage of life painting, ZHANG Jian's painting style gradually changed and he began to think that way of painting was too objective. Though such objectivity contained a kind of potential subjectivity, but was still restricted by the objects. In about 1998, he began to try another style, that is image style. He no longer invited his friend to the grove for life painting, but took photos of certain life scene he was interested in, either occasionally seen or still with models invited, then painted according to the photos he had. Such change not only shifted from still themes to dynamic themes, but also contained the diversity and intuition of life. Actually, it was not the most important. From Lunch on the Grassland to swimming theme, there was no essential change, but formal change, from complex pattern style impressionistic composition to pure images. It reflected a huge change in his art concepts. The change was not easy and the transition of the change reflected his hesitation and contradiction. But the final change was quite successful and he not only created a new form, but also entered a new realm.

　　Such change to ZHANG Jian seems to be transition from the modernism to the post-modernism. No matter what he wanted, his works impress people strongly with his desire to return back to the nature, back to the environment without any pollution. These works are huge in size, even at 2mX2m. When you stand before the paintings, you will feel all yourself melted into water, sky and atmosphere-that is the desire to have life merge into the nature. ZHANG Jian wanted to create a quiet and peaceful environment in his paintings, but we feel a kind of pressure for actually it is a lost home. His way of image is totally different from his previous impressionistic style, but his strong and pure color is still the same, seemingly infinitely enlarging certain part of his previous painting. The pure image and color is one of the characteristics of contemporary visual culture. ZHANG Jian reflects this characteristic in his painting and directly introduces realistic visual experiences in his paintings, but not directly imitates the images as the pop art did. For him, painting is a life existence and in the process of painting, the mark of life still exists in the paintings. Therefore, we can not simply say that ZHANG Jian's later works are of a kind of image style. The purity and vastness in his paintings both have life and even only a man in the water under the sky, we can never feel the hollowness, but only abundance merged with the nature. The world in his painting now is the same as that with boys and girls in the sun, still full of yearning. We yearn for that world everyday but can never make to the other side, for we are burdened with too many interests. ZHANG Jian describes this world with his sincerity and we feel that kind of intimacy in his paintings.

　　We can not classify ZHANG Jian to any kind, we feel sincerity in his paintings, but it is actualy our anxiety about our situatios. Nowadays with the prosperous development of the visual art, the techniques of painting have already lost its original meaning, but ZHANG Jian still insists on narrating the contemporary experiences in his painting language. His lyric expression brings us to the spiritual Peach Garden. Now there are not many poets left in the world. Just as the world described in ZHANG Jian's paintings, it was originally the reality surrounding us, but now becomes our ideal and yearning. Therefore, ZHANG Jian's nicety described actually conceals sadness and heaviness.